On Leaving Facebook

Part 2. Back To Reality

I have done it again. Yesterday, I terminated my presence on facebook again, the place I loved to hate. For years I had, to say the least, an ambiguous relationship with the place and its dwellers. There was a minute part I liked & valued and this I refused to give up, even though the prize I paid was far too high: the overwhelming hatred, alienation and self-loathing. Finally, my view cleared and logic triumphed (albeit in the midst of a nervous breakdown) and I quit. One by one, I cut every one of my dear foe-ish friends loose until I stood there alone in the desert with the dust blowing around my boots. I had severed all lines. I am released…

It’s not all smelling like Bubblicious and Arabian jasmine though... I am relieved to have made my escape, yet tonight I’m in the process of questioning my mental abilities. How could I have stooped so low in the first place… how could I have been so addicted to something I have always hated with such passion? Why did I listen to myself when I said that I could use it ‘in my own style’, and be kept free from anger & annoyment; and with what fool’s reasoning did I delude myself that I shouldn’t deny myself those slivers of companionship and fun despite the huge costs? I was blind: it was all one big exercise in self-torture and destructive cynicism. And although I could see the beauty in that, it wore me down, so down, and served no purpose any more.

All that was left was a boredom buoy that came with anger, a rash and, finally, panic… The Friend Request that broke the camel’s back was the one from a friend of 20 years back. There his head popped up out of the digital blue in the form of a red button and his written name. He wanted to know how I was doing and showed me his two children. So I did as any sane man would have done: I ran like hell. Christ, if there is one thing I fear then it’s bumping into former friends who to me are now worse than complete strangers. I could feel all these people slowly closing in on me like a band of zombies. I can’t have people that close when all they do is take! (I’m not speaking about all of those people, only the majority.) I should live by my own rule: One should not be there where one does not belong!

Suddenly I saw with great clarity the madness in my system. What the hell have I been doing! To try and fight boredom with anger and pain! This only adds to the Unrest! I was a fool to think otherwise. Sometimes, when my boredom was flying high, I could be seen pottering about the human sewer called facebook till late at night, cringing from every emoticon, ugly thought and corny ‘shared link’… watching birthday pictures of a complete stranger’s Grandmother… watching vomit inducing links for political or philanthropic causes… and petitions! Oh the petitions!  I never sign a petition as a general principle, not even one to safe my own life! Fuck off with your petitions I say! I was cursing humanity and it’s Lilliput mentality yet I refused to get off the island…

This computer has been my ally and worst enemy at the same time. It kept me in a fairy land of make belief and replaced my boredom with oblivion at best. It became so clear all of a sudden: I had to get away from that place, the place where nothing is real. Where everything is fake and digital, virtual, narrow-minded, small, ugly and numbing. What I have to do is something useful… anything! And something real… to write something worthwhile, or clean my house, find a new job, play my guitar, banjo or guitarra portuguesa, to paint, ride my bicycle, walk through the city, talk to people. Or just sit and think. Anything but this! Something real.

So I liberated myself. Cut myself off... What a strange feeling it is to give up most of your friends & relations. But now I can just read a book instead of finding myself watching a video of a piano playing cat at two o’clock in the morning. And all this just because I just didn’t want to back down… back down and admit that I do not belong.

This morning, I walked to the lake close by my house. I sat down on a bench in the sun, the real sun, and the wind, the real wind, and I read in a fantastic book and wished the passing people, real people, to have a great morning. Then I went home, baked bread and the sun shone into my house. It was good here. Nice and lonely. And no music. The leaves of the tree made a nice rustling sound and I heard a wheelie bin being rolled over the pavement in the street. It’s like being on vacation from myself. No more bullshit. Back to reality!